72 found
Order:
Disambiguations
Wayne A. Davis [77]Wayne Alan Davis [1]
  1.  77
    (1 other version)Meaning, expression, and thought.Wayne A. Davis - 2003 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
    This philosophical treatise on the foundations of semantics is a systematic effort to clarify, deepen, and defend the classical doctrine that words are conventional signs of mental states, principally thoughts and ideas, and that meaning consists in their expression. This expression theory of meaning is developed by carrying out the Gricean program, explaining what it is for words to have meaning in terms of speaker meaning, and what it is for a speaker to mean something in terms of intention. But (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   80 citations  
  2. Knowledge claims and context: loose use.Wayne A. Davis - 2007 - Philosophical Studies 132 (3):395-438.
    There is abundant evidence of contextual variation in the use of “S knows p.” Contextualist theories explain this variation in terms of semantic hypotheses that refer to standards of justification determined by “practical” features of either the subject’s context (Hawthorne & Stanley) or the ascriber’s context (Lewis, Cohen, & DeRose). There is extensive linguistic counterevidence to both forms. I maintain that the contextual variation of knowledge claims is better explained by common pragmatic factors. I show here that one is variable (...)
    Direct download (5 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   91 citations  
  3. Implicature: Intention, Convention, and Principle in the Failure of Gricean Theory.Wayne A. Davis - 1998 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
  4. (1 other version)Meaning, Expression, and Thought.Wayne A. Davis - 2005 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 71 (3):744-747.
    No categories
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   75 citations  
  5.  95
    Nondescriptive meaning and reference: an ideational semantics.Wayne A. Davis - 2005 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    Wayne Davis presents a highly original approach to the foundations of semantics, showing how the so-called "expression" theory of meaning can handle names and other problematic cases of nondescriptive meaning. The fact that thoughts have parts ("ideas" or "concepts") is fundamental: Davis argues that like other unstructured words, names mean what they do because they are conventionally used to express atomic or basic ideas. In the process he shows that many pillars of contemporary philosophical semantics, from twin earth arguments to (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   33 citations  
  6. A causal theory of intending.Wayne A. Davis - 1984 - American Philosophical Quarterly 21 (1):43-54.
    My goal is to define intending. I defend the view that believing and desiring something are necessary for intending it. They are not sufficient, however, for some things we both expect and want (e.g., the sun to rise tomorrow) are unintendable. Restricting the objects of intention to our own future actions is unwarranted and unhelpful. Rather, the belief involved in intending must be based on the desire in a certain way. En route, I argue that expected but unwanted consequences are (...)
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   68 citations  
  7.  36
    Probabilistic Causality.Wayne A. Davis & Ellery Eells - 1993 - Philosophical Review 102 (3):410.
  8. Propositions as Structured Cognitive Event‐Types.Wayne A. Davis - 2021 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 102 (3):665-692.
    According to act theories, propositions are structured cognitive act‐types. Act theories appear to make propositions inherently representational and truth‐evaluable, and to provide solutions to familiar problems with alternative theories, including Frege’s and Russell’s problems, and the third‐realm and unity problems. Act theories have critical problems of their own, though: acts as opposed to their objects are not truth evaluable, not structured in the right way, not expressed by sentences, and not the objects of propositional attitudes. I show how identifying propositions (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  9. A theory of happiness.Wayne A. Davis - 1981 - American Philosophical Quarterly 18 (2):111-20.
  10. (1 other version)The two senses of desire.Wayne A. Davis - 1984 - Philosophical Studies 45 (2):181-195.
    It has often been said that 'desire' is ambiguous. I do not believe the case for this has been made thoroughly enough, however. The claim typically occurs in the course of defending controversial philosophical theses, such as that intention entails desire, where it tends to look ad hoc. There is need, therefore, for a thorough and single-minded exploration of the ambiguity. I believe the results will be more profound than might be suspected.
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   43 citations  
  11. (3 other versions)Implicature: Intention, Convention, and Principle in the Failure of Gricean Theory.Wayne A. Davis - 2000 - Mind 109 (435):573-579.
    No categories
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   39 citations  
  12.  10
    Weak and Strong Conditionals.Wayne A. Davis - 2017 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 64 (1):57-71.
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  13.  96
    Cognitive propositions and semantic values.Wayne A. Davis - 2021 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 64 (4):383-423.
    ABSTRACT In recent work, Scott Soames has declared that we need a new conception of propositions to overcome critical objections to traditional theories of semantics and propositional attitudes. Propositions must be cognitive to account for their inherent intentionality, structure, and epistemic accessibility, and to overcome Frege’s and Russell’s problems. I have previously worked out a foundational semantics in which cognitive propositions are what sentences express. My objective in this paper is to identify some of the limitations of Soames’s theory, and (...)
    Direct download (5 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  14. Reasons and psychological causes.Wayne A. Davis - 2005 - Philosophical Studies 122 (1):51 - 101.
    The causal theory of reasons holds that acting for a reason entails that the agents action was caused by his or her beliefs and desires. While Donald Davidson (1963) and others effectively silenced the first objections to the theory, a new round has emerged. The most important recent attack is presented by Jonathan Dancy in Practical Reality (2000) and subsequent work. This paper will defend the causal theory against Dancy and others, including Schueler (1995), Stoutland (1999, 2001), and Ginet (2002).Dancy (...)
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   23 citations  
  15.  96
    Knowledge claims and context: belief.Wayne A. Davis - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (2):399-432.
    The use of ‘S knows p’ varies from context to context. The contextualist theories of Cohen, Lewis, and DeRose explain this variation in terms of semantic hypotheses: ‘S knows p’ is indexical in meaning, referring to features of the ascriber’s context like salience, interests, and stakes. The linguistic evidence against contextualism is extensive. I maintain that the contextual variation of knowledge claims results from pragmatic factors. One is variable strictness (Davis, Philos Stud, 132(3):395–438, 2007). In addition to its strict use, (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  16.  36
    Are Knowledge Claims Indexical?Wayne A. Davis - 2004 - Erkenntnis 61 (2-3):257-281.
    David Lewis, Stewart Cohen, and Keith DeRose have proposed that sentences of the form S knows P are indexical, and therefore differ in truth value from one context to another.1 On their indexical contextualism, the truth value of S knows P is determined by whether S meets the epistemic standards of the speakers context. I will not be concerned with relational forms of contextualism, according to which the truth value of S knows P is determined by the standards of the (...)
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   21 citations  
  17. Indicative and subjunctive conditionals.Wayne A. Davis - 1979 - Philosophical Review 88 (4):544-564.
    The idea that english has more than one declarative "mood" has been dismissed as superstitious by empirically-minded grammarians of english for centuries--with such spectacular unsuccess, however, that the indicative/subjunctive dichotomy stands today as a cornerstone for philosophical and logical speculation about "conditionals." let me be next into the breach. i shall urge that there is no grammatical basis for any such distinction. and as for the particular adjudications of mood logicians and philosophers actually propose, there is neither rhyme nor reason (...)
    Direct download (7 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   21 citations  
  18.  88
    A causal theory of enjoyment.Wayne A. Davis - 1982 - Mind 91 (April):240-256.
    Direct download (6 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   15 citations  
  19. Expression of emotion.Wayne A. Davis - 1988 - American Philosophical Quarterly 25 (4):279-291.
  20. Reliabilism and the extra value of knowledge.Wayne A. Davis & Christoph Jäger - 2012 - Philosophical Studies 157 (1):93-105.
    Goldman and Olsson ( 2009 ) have responded to the common charge that reliabilist theories of knowledge are incapable of accounting for the value knowledge has beyond mere true belief. We examine their “conditional probability solution” in detail, and show that it does not succeed. The conditional probability relation is too weak to support instrumental value, and the specific relation they describe is inessential to the value of knowledge. At best, they have described conditions in which knowledge indicates that additional (...)
    Direct download (5 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  21.  90
    The varieties of fear.Wayne A. Davis - 1987 - Philosophical Studies 51 (3):287 - 310.
    I shall conclude with a methodological moral. I have tried to show that there are several fundamentally different kinds of fear. One is a pure propositional attitude, one is partially a bodily state, and one is a relation between a person and a nonpropositional object. Other emotions come in similar varieties, such as hope and happiness, but with significant differences. The state of happiness, for example, does not entail any particular bodily state or feeling. So one lesson is this: it (...)
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   12 citations  
  22. Concept individuation, possession conditions, and propositional attitudes.Wayne A. Davis - 2005 - Noûs 39 (1):140-66.
  23. The Semantics of Actuality Terms: Indexical vs. Descriptive Theories.Wayne A. Davis - 2013 - Noûs 49 (3):470-503.
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  24.  41
    On Occurrences of Types in Types.Wayne A. Davis - 2014 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 92 (2):349-363.
    The different occurrences of a word in a sentence cannot be identified with the one word type, nor with its many tokens. What then are occurrences of a word? How can one type occur more than once in another type? Is the conception of ‘structural universals’ that leads to these questions incoherent, as Lewis maintained? I argue against the answer Wetzel suggested, which identifies sentences with functions from numbers to expressions, and propose instead that occurrences of one type in another (...)
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  25. Concepts and epistemic individuation.Wayne A. Davis - 2005 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 70 (2):290-325.
    Christopher Peacocke has presented an original version of the perennial philosophical thesis that we can gain substantive metaphysical and epistemological insight from an analysis of our concepts. Peacocke's innovation is to look at how concepts are individuated by their possession conditions, which he believes can be specified in terms of conditions in which certain propositions containing those concepts are accepted. The ability to provide such insight is one of Peacocke's major arguments for his theory of concepts. I will critically examine (...)
    Direct download (6 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  26.  94
    Meaning, Expression, and Indication: Reply to Buchanan.Wayne A. Davis - 2013 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 2 (1):62-66.
  27.  77
    Communicating, Telling, and Informing.Wayne A. Davis - 1999 - Philosophical Inquiry 21 (1):21-43.
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  28.  43
    Replies to Green, Szabó, Jeshion, and Siebel.Wayne A. Davis - 2008 - Philosophical Studies 137 (3):427-445.
    No categories
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  29.  70
    Berg’s Answer to Frege’s Puzzle.Wayne A. Davis - 2017 - Philosophia 45 (1):19-34.
    Berg seeks to defend the theory that the meaning of a proper name in a belief report is its reference against Frege’s puzzle by hypothesizing that when substituting coreferential names in belief reports results in reports that seem to have different truth values, the appearance is due to the fact that the reports have different metalinguistic implicatures. I review evidence that implicatures cannot be calculated in the way Grice or Berg imagine, and give reasons to believe that belief reports do (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  30. Contextualist theories of knowledge.Wayne A. Davis - 2005 - Acta Analytica 20 (1):29-42.
    Contextualist theories of knowledge offer a semantic hypothesis to explain the observed contextual variation in what people say they know, and the difficulty people have resolving skeptical paradoxes. Subject or speaker relative versions make the truth conditions of “S knows that p” depend on the standards of either the knower’s context (Hawthorne and Stanley) or those of the speaker’s context (Cohen and DeRose). Speaker contextualism avoids objections to subject contextualism, but is implausible in light of evidence that “know” does not (...)
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  31.  47
    Humeanism, Psychologism, and the Normative Story.Wayne A. Davis - 2003 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 67 (2):460-467.
    In Practical Reality, Jonathan Dancy argues that our reasons for action are not psychological states, but things we take to be facts about the world, and shows that the reasons themselves are not causes. Dancy concludes that intentional actions are not explained by beliefs and desires, and that explanations of action in terms of reasons are not causal explanations. I show that these further conclusions are unwarranted by sketching an alternative theory of reasons according to which what it is for (...)
    Direct download (6 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  32.  45
    Quotational and other opaque belief reports.Wayne A. Davis - 2021 - Analytic Philosophy 63 (4):213-231.
    In a novel move against Russellianism, Heck (2014) has argued that reports of the form S believes that p are semantically opaque on the grounds that there are no other means in English to report psychologically individuated beliefs, such as those Lois Lane reports using the names ‘Superman’ and ‘Clark Kent.’ I show that there are several other ways to meet this need. I focus on quotational reports of the form S believes “p,” which philosophers have overlooked or mischaracterized. I (...)
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  33. On nonindexical contextualism.Wayne A. Davis - 2013 - Philosophical Studies 163 (2):561-574.
    Abstract MacFarlane distinguishes “context sensitivity” from “indexicality,” and argues that “nonindexical contextualism” has significant advantages over the standard indexical form. MacFarlane’s substantive thesis is that the extension of an expression may depend on an epistemic standard variable even though its content does not. Focusing on ‘knows,’ I will argue against the possibility of extension dependence without content dependence when factors such as meaning, time, and world are held constant, and show that MacFarlane’s nonindexical contextualism provides no advantages over indexical contextualism. (...)
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  34.  25
    The Causal Theory of Action.Wayne A. Davis - 2010 - In Timothy O'Connor & Constantine Sandis (eds.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Action. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 32–39.
    This chapter contains sections titled: Action Intentional vs Unintentional Action Autonomous Action Action for Reasons References Further reading.
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  35.  17
    Irregular Negatives, Implicatures, and Idioms.Wayne A. Davis - 2016 - Dordrecht: Springer.
    The author integrates, expands, and deepens his previous publications about irregular (or "metalinguistic") negations. A total of ten distinct negatives-several previously unclassified-are analyzed. The logically irregular negations deny different implicatures of their root. All are partially non-compositional but completely conventional. The author argues that two of the irregular negative meanings are implicatures. The others are semantically rather than pragmatically ambiguous. Since their ambiguity is neither lexical nor structural, direct irregular negatives satisfy the standard definition of idioms as syntactically complex expressions (...)
    No categories
  36.  67
    Minimizing indexicality.Wayne A. Davis - 2014 - Philosophical Studies 168 (1):1-20.
    I critically examine Cappelen and Lepore’s definition of and tests for indexicality, and refine them to improve their adequacy. Indexicals cannot be defined as expressions with different referents in different contexts unless linguistic meaning and circumstances of evaluation are held constant. I show that despite Cappelen and Lepore’s claim that there are only a handful of indexical expressions, their “basic set” includes a number of large and open classes, and generates an infinity of indexical phrases. And while the tests can (...)
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  37.  34
    Grice’s Razor and Epistemic Invariantism.Wayne A. Davis - 2013 - Journal of Philosophical Research 38:147-176.
    Grice’s Razor is a methodological principle that many philosophers and linguists have used to help justify pragmatic explanations of linguistic phenomena over semantic explanations. A number of authors in the debate over contextualism argue that an invariant semantics together with Grice’s (1975) conversational principles can account for the contextual variability of knowledge claims. I show here that the defense of Grice’s Razor found in these “Gricean invariantists,” and its use against epistemic contextualism, display all the problems pointed out earlier in (...)
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  38. Cogitative and cognitive speaker meaning.Wayne A. Davis - 1992 - Philosophical Studies 67 (1):71 - 88.
  39.  55
    Epistemic Possibility, Concessive Knowledge Attributions, and Fallibilism.Wayne A. Davis - 2023 - Journal of Philosophy 120 (12):656-680.
    I argue that modal terms have an epistemic interpretation on which concessive knowledge attributions are semantically contradictory. This is compatible with the fallibilist view that the basis on which we know something need not entail it, but not with the view that what is known need not be epistemically certain or necessary. The apparent contradictoriness of concessive knowledge attributions is not due to mere implicature, nor to assertion updating the modal base. And it is contextually invariant. Concessive knowledge attributions contrast (...)
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  40.  25
    Irregular Negations.Wayne A. Davis - unknown
    Horn (1989) identified a number of irregular or marked negations that are not used in accordance with the standard rule of propositional logic. He concluded that negation was pragmatically ambiguous. Van der Sandt (1991) disputed Horn’s ambiguity claim, and proposed a uniform semantics for all negations. I will provide an informal explanation of van der Sandt’s theory, and develop a number of objections. I show that irregular negations are not anaphoric, as Van der Sandt believes, but compositional. I argue for (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  41.  7
    An Introduction to Logic.Wayne A. Davis - 1986 - Englewood Cliffs, NJ, USA: Prentice-Hall.
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  42.  12
    Cheap Propositions.Wayne A. Davis - 2024 - In Alessandro Capone, Pietro Perconti & Roberto Graci (eds.), Philosophy, Cognition and Pragmatics. Springer Nature Switzerland. pp. 3-21.
    To avoid problems with classical theories that take our mental states to represent in virtue of what propositions they represent, and more recent theories that reverse the representational priority, Grzankowski and Buchanan (Philos Stud 176:3159–3178, 2019) propose a “cheap” theory of propositions that does not assume that they are representational entities. They believe that everything there is to know about propositions is provided by the principle that token mental states have the same propositional content if they represent the same things (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  43.  21
    A Safe Road to Infallibilism?Wayne A. Davis - 2023 - The Monist 106 (4):381-393.
    In “How to Be an Infallibilist,” Julien Dutant (2016, 149) presents a simple and seemingly plausible argument that knowledge requires infallible belief—roughly, belief that could not be mistaken. As Dutant recognizes, infallibilism is almost universally dismissed, in large part because it seems to rule out any knowledge of the physical world. He seeks to show how we can be an Infallibilist without being a skeptic, based on the assumption that knowledge has a safety condition. I critically examine each line of (...)
    No categories
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  44.  45
    Précis of Meaning, Expression, and Thought.Wayne A. Davis - 2008 - Philosophical Studies 137 (3):383-387.
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  45. Thought structure, belief content, and possession conditions.Wayne A. Davis - 2008 - Acta Analytica 23 (3):207-231.
    According to Peacocke, concepts are individuated by their possession conditions, which are specified in terms of conditions in which certain propositions containing those concepts are believed. In support, Peacocke tries to explain what it is for a thought to have a structure and what it is for a belief to have a propositional content. I show that the possession condition theory cannot answer such fundamental questions. Peacocke’s theory founders because concepts are metaphysically fundamental. They individuate the propositions and thoughts containing (...)
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  46.  58
    Swain's counterfactual analysis of causation.Wayne A. Davis - 1980 - Philosophical Studies 38 (2):169 - 176.
  47.  28
    Loose talk, the context of assessment, and skeptical invariantism.Wayne A. Davis - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    Russell ([2022]. “Fancy Loose Talk About Knowledge.” Inquiry 65: 789–820.) defends a novel form of skeptical invariantism, according to which knowledge ascriptions are hardly ever true because they are so demanding, but nonetheless are ordinarily used loosely to communicate truths, where the felicity of loose talk is relative to the context of assessment as well as the context of use. I argue that while there is very good reason to believe that ‘know’ is a demanding term commonly used loosely, we (...)
    No categories
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  48.  32
    Quotational reports.Wayne A. Davis - 2022 - Linguistics and Philosophy 45 (5):1063-1090.
    This is a study of the syntax and semantics of reports containing speech-act and propositional attitude verbs with quotational complements. I make the case that while the quotational complements of some verbs, including _utter_, are nominal and metalinguistic, those of others, including _assert_ and _believe_, are clausal and nonmetalinguistic. Quotational reports with ‘say’ are ambiguous. When quotational complements are clausal, they are like _that_-clauses in being subordinate content clauses with main-clause form. Unlike _that_-clauses, quote-clauses force deictic shift and are unambiguously (...)
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  49. Lowe on Indicative and Counterfactual Conditionals.Wayne A. Davis - 1980 - Analysis 40 (4):184 - 186.
    Lowe claims that "if oswald did not kill kennedy, someone else did" is a material conditional. he also claims that the difference in truth-value between this indicative conditional and the subjunctive "if oswald had not killed kennedy, someone else would have" does not support the conclusion of lewis and others that corresponding indicative and subjunctive conditionals are not always equivalent. i dispute both claims.
    Direct download (5 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  50.  8
    Context-Sensitivity without Indexicality?Wayne A. Davis - 2007 - In Christoph Jäger & Winfried Löffler (eds.), Epistemology: Contexts, Values, Disagreement. Papers of the 34th International Ludwig Wittgenstein-Symposium in Kirchberg, 2011. The Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society. pp. 41-52.
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
1 — 50 / 72